In 2016, a senior Facebook executive was kept in a Brazilian jail for nearly 24 hours in what the company considered "an extreme and disproportionate measure" resulting from a dispute over a court's demand to provide data from its WhatsApp service.

The messaging app also became the frontline in Brazil's bitter presidential race last year, after newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that supporters of far-right candidate and eventual victor Jair Bolsonaro had funded mass messaging attacks against leftist rival Fernando Haddad.

A few days before the election, Facebook removed dozens of pages and accounts associated with a Brazilian marketing group, for violating the social media network's misrepresentation and spam policies.

WhatsApp has more than 120 million users in Brazil, a country of nearly 210 million people, rivalling the reach of Facebook's main platform in one of the company's biggest global markets.

The messaging service has become one of the main ways Brazilians keep in touch with friends, and family, and also an important channel for getting political information and doing business.